Alamort: Half dead of exhaustion.
Steve has been up way before dawn, digging around through his room and the rest of the Tower respectively, trying to find mementoes of his time with Bucky, both from the 1940s and from only a few months before. He previously hadn't known how much trash he'd accumulated, and is currently sitting on the floor of the living room, trying to figure out exactly why a coupon for a bag of grapefruits from the local farmer's market was so important. He turns it over in his hands, swallows hard when he sees Bucky's familiar scrawl, the a's long and loopy and almost like l's, saying that Bucky wanted to make fruit salad, did they put grapefruit in fruit salad? He wasn't sure, after all it was 2014 and Bucky hadn't made fruit salad since the '40s and they probably had significantly more money than they had back in the day, even though grapefruits were maybe only a nickel at the worst of times.
And sure, he might be a super soldier, he thinks as he sneezes yet again, rooting around the attic of the Tower, springing up decades-old dust and memories as he uncovers black and white photos, old uniforms, letters written in the same long-handed scrawl, but that doesn't mean he can't get tired. And he's so tired of this, of trying to pretend that things are okay with Bucky, that it's just some case of lost memory.
You don't lose memories, Steve's convinced. Misplace them, perhaps, but you can't possibly lose them. And when Natasha had told him that maybe it might be a good idea to try to bring the "new" Bucky up to date with things, he'd only nodded and turned his face away so she couldn't see the look in his eyes.
He coughs, sending dust motes swirling through the predawn light of the attic, sighs and sits down, leaning back against old boxes of things he hasn't yet gotten to.
He tenses as he hears a creak at the far end of the attic, his mind racing - Could someone have gotten into the Tower? Was it one of those old Japanese ghosts that died a horrible death and then took revenge on whoever happened to be there at the time (he'd been watching a lot of horror movies lately, per Bucky's insistence)? Perhaps it was a mouse? - before he sees a head of longish dark hair coming up through. He grips at the nearest thing - an old prototype of a shield, made out of nothing more substantial than tin foil - and prepares for battle with the grudge, or the girl from the Ring or something equally horrifying.
"Steve? Is that you?"
He relaxes his grip on the foil shield for a moment.
"Bucky?" he calls back, and watches the figure come towards him, its features becoming more distinct in the soft grey light that is now filtering through the skylight windows.
Bucky plops himself down beside Steve, sneezing as he unsettles a cloud of dust.
"What are you doing up here?" he asks. "I couldn't sleep, it's too cold, and our bed's too big to get properly warm in. What are you doing anyway?" he asks, fingering the tinfoil shield, unaware of the smile that spreads across Steve's face, slow and sticky sweet.
"I'm just looking through some old photos," Steve explains, wrapping an arm around Bucky. "I couldn't sleep either."
Bucky yawns, letting the tin foil shield clatter to the floor. "Well, why don't you come back and try?"
This time, when Steve falls into bed, he finds exhaustion wending its way through his bones and falls asleep, Bucky wrapped soft and securely around him.